


where all of a sudden dissonance disappears

by cornerstones



Category: Stray Kids (Band)
Genre: Aromantic Character, Canon Compliant, Coming Out, Feelings Realization, Found Family, Gen, Introspection, M/M, Queerplatonic Relationships (implied)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-12
Updated: 2020-11-12
Packaged: 2021-03-09 18:53:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,155
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27531076
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cornerstones/pseuds/cornerstones
Summary: It's a curious thing, how deeply invested people are in his personal life. But with time he's also come to realize that when their infamous dating ban has passed people seem to expect him to be in a romantic relationship at some point. Probably sooner than later.The thought makes him queasy, uncomfortable, but more than that he is just… confused that people say that he will find true love and be completely happy because he is loved and he is happy already, has been for quite some time now.-----When Chan stumbles over some tweets and comments that make him uncomfortable, he starts to think about just how differently he seems to experience love in comparison to other people - and maybe he will be finally able to put those feelings into words.
Relationships: Bang Chan & Everyone, Bang Chan & Lee Minho | Lee Know, Bang Chan/Everyone
Comments: 22
Kudos: 122





	where all of a sudden dissonance disappears

**Author's Note:**

> title taken from "goes on and on" by sleeping at last
> 
> this is set when chan posted his skz record "인정하기 싫어" in may this year
> 
> warning for aromisia and queermisia (only concerning the comments he reads) 
> 
> also just fyi, this is a fic about an aro character written by an actual aro person (◠‿◠✿)

It was just supposed to be a quick stroll through Twitter, just to see some reactions to his newly released solo track.

Chan had been admittedly a bit nervous about posting his song because even though he feels confident in his work, it's always a nerve-wracking thing to present something by yourself and to not have at least one other member with you. It’s what he’s known for years now, what he’s most comfortable with and he’s glad to know that they feel the same.

But every now and again he makes music just by himself, most of which he never intends to publish anyway, at least not as a solo project that is. Frankly, he doesn’t know why this song was different in that manner. What he does know, though, is that watching some of the kids doing their own projects and testing themselves out in a way that is not entirely tied to Stray Kids not only made him extremely proud - it gave him a tiny push and a lot of courage to (musically) venture out a bit as well.

The song itself is, weirdly, somewhat therapeutic to him. It felt good, cathartic even, to put his thoughts and feelings into albeit simple but truthful words. He liked the stripped back atmosphere the song held even while producing as well as the challenge in that. In the end, even as the polished and finished version, it felt raw and authentic, exactly how heartbreak should sound like, he thought after listening to it all the way through one last time.

And it really is heartbreak that he put into every line and chord. After all, it’s hard to forget all of the pain and trauma of his trainee days; the confusing dichotomy of competition and solidarity, of wanting to be praised by higher-ups as well as accepted by your fellow trainees. This made it hard to make friends, and maintain those friendships, even though it was crucial to find that sort of support system to get you through the longest days. It was even harder to lose people, be it because they didn’t make the cut or left on their own volition.

But the losses that hurt the worst were those caused by envy and resentment, those scars cut a bit deeper and lasted longer than others. Chan had been angry and disappointed with himself for the longest time because when someone spits ugly words at you, about how undeserving you are, even though they had been acting like a loyal friend before, it is hard to not feel at least an ounce of truth in those accusations. To write his feelings down after years of time and distance felt relieving, freeing even, like he is finally able to close that particular chapter of his trainee days. He has seven others to hold on to, after all. 

So yes, the song is about heartbreak, just maybe not the kind that fans seem to take from it. 

But that is not what has led him to browsing through Twitter and the YouTube comment section for over an hour now. After all, he kind of expected fans to jump to very specific conclusions as to what his solo track might be about and at least one of those he can debunk in a future Chan's Room. 

What did give him pause, though, were the numerous tweets and comments of a different nature that he knows come from a place of caring and yet they just feel like some kind of weird pressure that just keeps getting heavier with each word. 

_This man needs all the love, I want him to be happy so badly, his future spouse better treat him well._

_Omg this is so heartbreaking, I wish for him to find true love someday, he deserves it._

_His future wife must be so lucky._

_I hope he has a girlfriend or boyfriend someday who cherishes him like he deserves._

It's a curious thing, how deeply invested people are in his personal life. Of course, he has always been aware that this would be the case, it's what the company has prepared them for after all. And for years he had been able to just shrug such comments off and not think about them too much, especially with the infamous dating ban still going. 

But with time he's come to realize that when that has passed people seem to expect him to be in a romantic relationship at some point. Probably sooner than later. And suddenly it feels much harder to simply shrug those comments off. 

The thought makes him queasy, uncomfortable, but more than that he is just… confused that people say that he will find true love and be completely happy because he is loved and he is happy already, has been for quite some time now. 

Something about all those well-meaning comments makes him feel strangely attacked in a way - even worse, as if they are belittling him because they seem to think that they know what is good for him better than himself.

It’s almost annoying that people want to push their own understanding of a happy life onto him without him letting have a say in this. But it’s not something he can tell them, is it? Not only because it shouldn’t be anyone else’s concern but his own but also because how can he tell them that the idea of him in any sort of romantic relationship just feels incredibly wrong to him? Like instead of making him happier, it would just be something that simply isn’t _him_.

His spiraling train of thought gets interrupted by a knock on the door to the studio he has been holed up in to work, initially. Minho peeks his head in, already talking: "Hyung, are you joining us for dinner in…" 

His voice trails off as he takes in the scene, eyes tracing over Chan's still closed laptop, his turned off MIDI controller, the headphones lying next to it and the phone in his hand, screen lit up with the comment section under the latest SKZ-record, before they land on Chan's face with a frown. 

"Everything okay?" 

"Yeah, yeah," Chan rushes out, not wanting Minho to worry about him. "When are you leaving for dinner?" 

Chan's attempt to try and distract him from the unlikely scene in front of him does not work because Minho steps inside the studio, closing the door behind him with a final sounding click. 

"Did something happen?" 

Minho's voice is even but Chan has known him for too long not to hear the tenderness in it as well. 

"No, not really, I'm…" 

How is he supposed to explain what exactly has him so troubled right now when he was barely able to admit all of this to himself just now?

Minho waits for a few seconds and when Chan still hasn’t answered him, he pulls another chair closer to sit down right next to him.

“You’ve been going through comments,” Minho states more than he asks, eyeing the phone still lit up in Chan’s hand with slightly pinched eyebrows and pursed lips.

It’s an expression that speaks of an old, familiar chagrin; none of them has probably forgotten about the many nights in their first year after debuting where Chan would stay awake at night to go through thousands of tweets and comments, thousands of voices clouding his head and making him second guess himself so many times. Too many times, probably, if you were to ask the members.

It’s something Chan has learned to live with - the criticism of people who supposedly love their music, love them, and those who decidedly don't, and while he’s still going through Twitter quite often, it’s more manageable now. You can’t please everyone, so you might as well be unapologetically confident in what you do.

“Yeah, but it’s not that,” he says but pauses immediately because that is not entirely the truth. “Well… it is, but not like before.”

Minho’s frown remains, though by now it is coloured in confusion at Chan’s words. He blinks slowly and Chan stays quiet to give Minho as well as himself time to process.

“Then what is it about?” Minho asks after a beat.

It is a valid question. What _is_ this all about? Even though Chan’s first thought is “people wish for me to find love and I feel deeply uncomfortable with that”, he cannot bring himself to voice it out loud because, frankly, it feels a bit ridiculous. They mean no harm by these comments, he knows that. So, even though they make him uncomfortable, he feels ungrateful by how much everything inside of him recoils at their words.

“I don’t know, just…” He makes some vague gestures and puts his phone on the desk, trying to avoid Minho’s eyes. A nervous giggle escapes his throat when he continues, “people worrying about my love life, you know.”

It feels wrong even as he says it. “Love life”. What a weird expression, if you think about it.

When he tries to envision this sort of abstract concept, he doesn’t see himself with one particular person. Because there is his family in Australia that loves him and that he loves in return. There is his other family, that he has found by himself, back home at the dorm. There are his friends, within and outside of the industry. There are their managers. There is Berry. And his friends’ families. His life is already filled with so much love, how could he ever deny having a “love life”, albeit that it might not look like the societal idea of it.

“You know that they don’t know you or your life, right?”

Minho’s voice is careful, as if he has sensed some of Chan’s discomfort.

“Yeah, I know,” he replies, tone light with fake casualness, “I guess it’s just hard to accept people’s well-wishes for me, you know?”

“You don’t think you deserve to be happy?”

“No, no,” Chan is quick to argue and looks up to find Minho’s bewildered gaze on him. “No, that’s the point. I _am_ happy. I already got you guys, I don’t need more people or other people to be happier.”

As he says it, something clicks in his mind; it feels not unlike the moment during arranging a track when all of the layers fall into place and a tune suddenly feels complete and more like a real song.

So maybe that’s the gist of his inner turmoil. He already is happy, and there is no part of him that is longing for something else that people say should cause him happiness. 

The longer he tries to picture himself with someone who he should call a lover, the more he realizes that no part of him is yearning for something like that. Even if he really tries to envision this, there is nothing inside of him that feels like... a _pull_ towards someone in that kind of way. And perhaps he just doesn’t feel about anyone that way.

He takes a deep breath, and with it he breathes out some of the tension and confusion that has been weighing on his mind for longer than he probably realized.

“Hyung?”

For a moment Chan has forgotten that Minho is with him and that he has no idea about his realization, how it is maybe not a new and groundbreaking understanding of himself but how finally something has fallen into place. Instead of daunting, it just feels comfortable. It feels right.

“Are you sure you’re okay?”

Rather than answering, Chan can’t stop a question of his own tumbling from his lips: “You know how people have expectations of you? And what your life should look like?”

Minho raises an eyebrow, the sarcastic “duh” being left unspoken.

“Okay, okay, I know you do,” Chan concedes with a smile before taking a breath once again and his expression sobering up. “But what I mean is… About fans, people wanting me to have…”

With a groan he interrupts himself and rubs a hand over his face in an attempt to recollect his thoughts. He doesn’t feel rushed though, because knows Minho will give him all the time he needs and he couldn’t be more thankful to him right now.

Taking his hand off of his face, he decides to just speak his mind without any more overthinking.

“The thing is, maybe they want for me to someday have that one special person in my life to love but what about what I want for myself? Because… because I already got someone special, you know. In fact, I have seven special people,” he says, his breath hitching slightly at the last part; he is suddenly overcome with just how much he loves them, and it frustrates him that whatever words there are to describe his feelings, they all seem inadequate. For some reason, he doesn’t dare look up and instead watches his own fingers tracing invisible patterns on the desk. “And maybe the way we love each other is different from what other people think is fulfilling but for me that is... everything I want in my life, if I’m honest.”

He can feel his heart hammering nervously inside his chest. Biting his lips, he can’t help but suddenly feel like he said too much and burdened Minho with something he didn’t want. But even more than that, Chan feels vulnerable because he wants to be understood. Maybe not by everyone but by Minho, and the other boys. He wants to be understood by the people that matter the most in his life. And if he’s completely honest with himself, he can’t bear the thought of them rejecting him for just wanting to keep them in his life, as closely as possibly.

All of a sudden, there is Minho’s hand grasping his own on the desk, stopping him in his restless motions and making him look up again. Similar to before, he blinks slowly, seemingly studying Chan in front of him before humming quietly.

“Hyung…” He hums once more as if he’s gathering the words he wants to say in his head. “You’re not… abnormal for feeling this way. Okay?”

The uneasy tension in his chest dissipates at Minho’s words, even though they don’t feel real at first. However, his hand on Chan’s does, and it grounds him.

“We’re…” Minho trails off with a huff and leans his head to the side momentarily with his eyes closed, eyebrows pinched together.

“Hannie would be better at this… maybe even Changbinnie,” he mumbles in a slightly grumpy tone that makes Chan smile fondly. With yet another huff, he straightens his posture and locks his eyes on Chan again. “Ugh, okay. So. We’re not going to leave you. Okay? None of us.”

His words are blunt but no less sincere for it and it stuns Chan into silence.

Of course, on some level he knows that, he knows that all of them are committed to their music and to the group. But it’s something different to hear that all of them are committed to him as a person as well.

“Who cares if you don’t want to date, anyway?” Minho says with a shrug and a hesitant smirk, an effort to lighten the mood.

Chan tries to mirror that smile but it feels frail in comparison to his sombre tone. “People will wonder, though. Especially when the dating ban is lifted. You know they will say something, at some point.”

“Well, then we tell them that you can’t date because you got us,” Minho replies easily, and even though he’s smiling, Chan can see in edge in that smile; it speaks of a resolution, so to speak, that dares anyone to contradict him. To Chan, though, it only feels protective, and the feeling settles warmly in his chest.

“Alright,” Chan complies, ducking his head with a smile.

Minho strokes his thumb over Chan’s hand.

“You’ve done so much for us… So I fear you’re just never going to get rid of us now.”

There’s still that half-joking tone colouring his voice but it’s also careful and soft, just like the look Minho gives him when he looks back up.

“And you have always supported us, so just trust us to support you in everything as well. Yeah?”

“Yeah okay,” he replies breathlessly and he blinks rapidly to keep the rising emotion inside of him at bay. “Thank you.”

It sounds like an empty phrase to him; everything he could say in that moment seems insufficient to express how much Minho’s acceptance and support means to him. He can only hope that he understands the weight of his gratitude but he trusts that he knows him well enough by now to hear what he can’t say sometimes.

“Don’t mention it,” Minho says with a light pat to his hand, as if Chan hasn’t just opened up to him about an integral part of himself. As strange as it might sound, it’s exactly what he needs right now. “You wanna go and have dinner? I’ll pay.”

“Sure.”

They make quick work of packing up Chan’s equipment and Chan grabs his bags to get going, Minho steadying him with an arm around his waist when he almost got a strap caught on the chair and lost his balance.

As they leave the studio, Minho keeps his hand on his waist for a beat longer before squeezing lightly and letting his hand slowly fall away, leaving a trace of warmth in its wake.

Later that night, when insomnia and random YouTube videos keep Chan company, Minho will enter his room and climb up into his bed. He will turn on his phone and tell him about what he’s read about non-romantic relationships, showing him some articles. He will lean his head on Chan’s shoulder, asking if he is okay with talking more about it and tell him there are a lot of people experiencing love the same way. It will be a lot to take in for Chan but he will also know that it will be alright, especially when he has seven other people staying by his side.

They will keep talking in low tones as to not wake Felix or Changbin and they will both be reminded of their trainee days, where they always talked the nights away till they fell asleep, oftentimes in the midst of a random conversation. Only this time, they will fall asleep in the same bed, tangled up, and with more shared years and memories between them than they would have ever expected back then.

Chan will feel calm, smiling at Minho’s even breaths and the occasional mumbled curse word in his sleep until his presence lulls him to sleep as well.

But for now, Chan only smiles to himself as he follows Minho out of the building. He has his family waiting for him, after all.

**Author's Note:**

> first of all, if you're one of the estimated five people who actually read this fic: thank you so much for clicking on this fic and giving it a go! it honestly means the world to me <3
> 
> this is probably the most personal and self-indulgent fic i've ever written so far bc as much as i love my (romantic) ships, aspec and especially aro representation is really important to me
> 
> that being said, i just wanna emphasize here that chan's experience as i portrayed it is by no means a blueprint for every aro (and arospec) person, after all, everyone's experiences and feelings are individual and personal
> 
> also a quick note abt the tagged qprs: i know it's not explicitly said anyone's in a qpr but lbr skz can be seen as a big queerplatonic polycule anyway :D
> 
> i hope you enjoyed this little fic! thank you for reading! <3


End file.
